Posts by RedWinterBloom

My partner and I are happily practicing monogamy but also think there's a lot of important lessons to be learned from polyamourous ideals, and it's really nice to see mutual respect between these different life choices.

Gawd yes!! My ex always wanted to have "an open relationship" mind you this was after he cheated many times..like fuck that. I have always looked at sex as being just that sex, it doesn't equate to love. I would had been fine with this idea, if he didn't break my trust so much before! It's not away to stop someone from cheating on you. Don't ever feel like changing the rules boundaries relationship is going to fix your problems, it won't. There are poly people that can be in a monogamous relationship, it's all about respecting your partner and you're set boundaries.

When me and my wife got together, she was VERY monogamous. she knew I was poly but didn't think itd be for her. Monogamy and polyamory both need boundaries and if someone cant learn to respect them, then they dont respect the people they're attached to

My ex absolutely cheated on me, by lying to me repeatedly and breaking my trust with one of his partners. Including lying about moving in with said partner, who hated me. I don’t care that he had other partners, but I called off our wedding because of the lies

Cheating has psychological implications, I hate when people automatically assume that monogamy is the reason for cheating. Personally I've seen more toxic shit in polyamorous relationship with jealousy, stupid insecurities, demands, meeting everyone needs while you are left out than on monogamous ones. People cheat because they want to, not because it's a thing in monogamy culture. Lol.

People like to pretend polyamory makes you automatically enlightened but really it's just multiple relationships at once. Polyamory can make it easier to cover up someone is bad at relationships, especially if they only have partners that are more casual, you might not notice they just plain don't care about their partner's needs at all.

you might not notice they just plain don't care about their partner's needs at all.

I've actually seen this a lot in certain circles that focus on this weird almost Ayn Rand style poly. They focus heavily on the fact that no one owns someone else or can claim and control their love. I hear that line, 'I'm not responsible for his/her feelings' and cringe.

I agree, no one can be responsible for another person's feelings. But that line so often used in the context of dismissing a partner's feelings. Unless your partner has agreed to a relationship devoid of empathy, the absence of direct control does not exempt you from the sometimes difficult work of giving a shit about the feelings of people you care for.

That's the thing, like yeah you can't directly control how others feel, but you should at least care about how they feel, because otherwise, why are you around them? At all? Like it's a choice, just as I've chosen to be alone for a good while because nobody I've met has felt like a remotely good partner for my needs.

And ugh "I'm not responsible for your feelings" are like "I'm sorry you feel that way". Like there are some isolated use cases that are fair ones but it essentially gets overused by empathy-less people who like to make it everyone else's fault for being upset when they do terrible things and it hurts them. "Look well you decided to be hurt by me giving you herpes so I don't see why you're mad at me" or "Look you never directly asked multiple times about spending time together so I just assumed it wasn't important enough for you, and spent time with my other, richer partners instead after agreeing to spend time with you and then not doing. Also gonna lie and say I fell asleep so you can't get angry at me because if you do it means you're selfish, even if I agreed to do something with you but could have told the truth and said I needed sleep." Run into that second one repeatedly. Like every time I made plans something would come up and it would be a new partner he's "just settling in" or the one he was dating with money at the time would be taking him out to eat and he would send me selfies I didn't ask for of how much money she spent.

Then like, if I got upset about him bringing up her money every conversation "I'm not responsible for your feelings, you need to work on your own insecurities like an adult." Same for sharing pictures of her nude with me. He always claimed to "just want to share with me" but reacted badly whenever I asked if he even had permission to show them and repeated the same line of "I'm not responsible for your feelings and you need to work on your insecurities like an adult." While never telling me I looked cute, taking me out on dates, ever. Like and then he blamed me for the relationship ending because I was "too insecure" and took the evidence of him having 20+ partners over 3 years as why he clearly was a better relationship-er than I ever could be.

And ugh "I'm not responsible for your feelings" are like "I'm sorry you feel that way". Like there are some isolated use cases that are fair ones but it essentially gets overused by empathy-less people who like to make it everyone else's fault for being upset when they do terrible things and it hurts them.

I run into this all the time. It can be such a manipulative thing to say because most of the time, it's valid. It is indeed abusive to blame another person for your feelings. On the flip side, "I'm not responsible for your feelings" can also be used in an abusive way. My first partner was a narcissistic, controlling, physically abusive person. He didn't show that side of him at first, but what was apparently even early on in the relationship was how much he felt it necessary to "remind" me that he wasn't responsible for my feelings. That "nobody can make you feel bad without your consent." He used it as a convenient fallback to evade any kind of accountability for his actions, and made me think that I was just too sensitive or selfish for being hurt by the things he did and said- inconsiderate at first, gradually getting worse until he was straight up cruel.

That line has also been used by people I've dated who, in my opinion, have really avoidant styles of attachment and are afraid of anyone threatening their independence. To the point where they attack you for perceived threats to their autonomy. And whatever, avoidant people can date each other if that makes them happy, lol. I just want relationships and friendships where I can talk openly about my feelings, and not have to avoid certain topics like landmines.

Not blaming your partner for your feelings is a good and healthy boundary that is needed to prevent co-dependency. Sure. I just think that we should try to practice empathy in our relationships, and being invested in and caring about your partners feelings as they relate to you doesn't necessarily mean co-dependency and loss of autonomy.

I hope you find someone who you trust as a good partner for your needs.

Fell into exactly that trap in my last relationship. Turns out he was a very casual dater and had extreme jealousy issues in more serious relationships. Also completely devoid of empathy, so that was fun.

I wish someone had told me this before my first polyam relationship. I forgave so much shit because I thought that polyam relationships inherently function differently. But nope, my partner was just an uncommunicative, selfish ass who did not have time for me and was too much of a coward to tell me.

It's not that simple. There's evidence to suggest that biologically, we didn't evolve to be monogamous. In fact, many cultures have never practiced monogamy. There's a lot to be said for the puritan values western societies uphold due to religious domination of culture for millenia.

I hear this a lot, the biological/historical argument is weak in saying what we should do.

If you rely on history for your argument you probably end up with polygyny with few exceptions. History is complex, and not a good guide for what makes us happy.

The evolution argument doesn't have a super convincing scientific case at this point. Further, there's also evidence to suggest we evolved to be tribal creatures with the ability to turn off our empathy towards people outside of our group. There's evidence we evolved with biases to think we're better than most other people. There's evidence we evolved to hold tightly to our current opinions and dismiss conflicting evidence. Taken together, tribalism, self centerdness, and cognitive dissonance are some of the most destructive forces in modern society.

'This is in my DNA' is not sufficient cause to justify a lifestyle. It's a normative statement, but you have a lot of work to do still in getting to a prescriptive statement. Ie you still have to show that the behavior is beneficial (or at least not harmful) to your well-being and the well-being of people you love.

There's this group of poly people who seem to feel they have to convince everyone this is a superior lifestyle, and they use the historical/biological angle a lot. This isn't the show stopping argument they seem to think it is.

I know there's a lot of bias towards the status quo, but I think the place to start is with the individual, regardless of how one got that way.

I agree. I'm not sure polyamory is a majority of people's natural state but non-monogamy definitely is. And demanding (often unspoken) sexual commitment as a default anytime a relationship gets serious is toxic for people who feel like their sexual instincts are being suffocated and judged.

Couples need to learn to communicate and it's true no one should presume a relationship is open -- or closed for that matter -- without a conversation. However, our society's condemnation of non-monogamous inclinations makes these conversations so much harder to have.

Sometimes it is not until someone suddenly cheats or is close to cheating that they realise they've been in denial about their desires and should have communicated to their partner. Does not excuse the behaviour but you could say it's partly rooted in "toxic expectations of monogamy".

To be honest I don't really know if that statement is actually true. Polyamory and human nature are actually in contradiction with most of people feelings. If we were made to be polyamorous by nature, we wouldn't feel jealousy, self-doubt when it comes to our partners, the lack of confidence and the fact that the other person might leave us one day. I believe everything is linked to how we feel and our perspective. I'm monogamous myself but I've dated a girl that was into the poly lifestyle and had 1 more boyfriend and a girlfriend. I didn't had a problem with them, really, even if I'm fully monogamous and I was aware of their existence. To be honest I didn't cared that much about them because I didn't cared that much about her too. And that was because my feelings were not made to share my partner by nature. At some point I grew fond of her and everything was great overall. Except the scheduling was a pain and the other two always had to comment on why she spends that much time with me and why she always made plans with me first and not them(keep in mind that she was really trying really hard to make it work with all of us - at times I even told her she can stop seeing me for a few weeks to spend more time with them too if she that's what she wants). In my eyes, it was really simple. Even if she was attracted to the other two as well, she still was drawn to me more, because she felt more natural when she was around me and our interactions. She even stopped responding to them at some point because she was "tired of their bullshit".
This led me to a conclusion. There's no way to stop a bond from getting stronger. I mean she was trying so hard to make it work with them as well but it was like the odds were against her on that part. Now, I don't really know the full details but when we were talking she always had to mention how the other two are acting like children and how "threatened" they feel when it comes to me. From what she told me she was poly for 5 years and she was only in poly relationships until she met me. She also told me that in every relationship she had, there was this one person that was incredibly jealous, always made demands and always had some shitty things to say if things weren't as they wanted. She even told me that she wants to be monogamous with me because I make her feel like she "doesn't need anyone else". The key word being "'need". As I said, I don't really believe that we were made to be polyamorous. I view it as a choice and a way of living but from everything I heard and read after I started to do some research on this subject (I started being really curious because I also have a friend who is poly and his wife is poly too) I realized that there is just as much toxicity like in traditional relationships. It just involves more people and more opinions and even more work and stress when it comes to please everyone and making things work. And after my relationship with that girl i simply realized that it's true at some extent that we weren't fully made to be poly, it's just a mindset and a way of living and existing.

I think the post meant its not the only reason. Cheating is cheating, regardless of the style of your relationship. It means the person is willing to lie and take a chance at hurting their partner. Maybe the feelings and desires to take those risks are a result of a monogamous relationship where a polyamorous one wouldn't have caused that, but breaking trust doesn't just happen in monogamous relationships

I've definitely seen infidelity that happened purely because of toxic monogamy and extreme restrictions placed on the guy, who wasn't even allowed to talk to other girls, and that's about what defines toxic monogamy for me: "you're not allowed to have any sort of meaningful connections with anyone of any sex you're attracted to, cuz you might be cheating", and then healthy poly is just doing away with that altogether and giving people the opportunity to go really far in those connections. Toxicity naturally happens in every sort of interpersonal relationship, but that sort of "I can't trust you not to go trophy hunting that girl who once sat next to you on the bus" attitude being normalized, even, is what sort of kills the thought of monogamy for me. I'd be perfectly happy only ever having one partner, and I'm not even going out of my way to date (nobody has the time for that), but I want the freedom. And if a person is being denied smaller freedoms than that, they will, eventually, just say "fuck it" and cheat on their partner, even if they wouldn't have otherwise.

Actually: if you read up on Infidelity: a Lot of people cheat who are in healthy and HAPPY relationships. The idea that it’s all folx who are unhappy is not true. Are there people who cheat because they are miserable? Yes. There are also people who cheat who are in happy relationships that aren’t in any way toxic in the ways you describe. Read anything by Esther Perel/watch her TED talk!

I did not say that it's "all unhappy folks", I just said that this sort of thing exists :D And not even only with jealous girl - cheating guy, it can happen in any arrangement of genders, this specific one was the one I saw firsthand.

No, you did not say all: my apologies. However, the implication that someone is “driven” to cheat on a partner because they are so “restrictive” is not only mostly a false conclusion, it removes a cheater’s personal responsibility for making a choice: and I disagree with that level of moralizing. I don’t say that as virtue signaling either: I have cheated once before, and I fully own that it was a CHOICE I made. No one “drove” me to it. I had other options: I just didn’t take them at the time.

Possibly, yes. Sometimes, though, if you're in an absolutely shitty situation, certain choices just don't seem like choices to you, and sometimes it's not even easy to see the lines between, say, close friendship and emotional infidelity (as cheating is not restricted to just the peepee inside some hole sort of acts), and it gets hard to tell random intrusive sexual thoughts from desire for a specific person. Cheating is not a ledge you step over once, it's a slope where people mark different levels as their "comfort zone" for what is acceptable and what isn't. I'd argue that on an emotional level, it's really easy to not realize you've completely fallen for someone until it's too late, and it's also really easy for conversations to gradually cross over into the "inappropriate as fuck" territory, at which point, going physical, if you so desire, doesn't change much.

I understand where you are coming from, but there is still a choice. It may not feel easy or simple, but there is always a choice. EACH “slippery slope” you mention all have CHOICE involved.

You can have a conversation, and CHOOSE to let that be all it is. You can feel all the feels you want, and choose to have a conversation with your SO, or choose to let things be.

I would argue even those in a relationship that is so restrictive that THOUGHTS about another person are considered “cheating”, are still CHOOSING to continue a relationship.

You and others are free to disagree, but I maintain that IF we choose to believe we have no other options we cage ourselves.

Obviously: there ARE instances that are extreme. If someone is in an abusive relationship: I will absolutely concede that in THAT situation: choices are EXTREMELY limited.

I don’t know that it matters if the choice seems like a choice to you or not. There is ALWAYS a choice, moralizing about motives is IMHO beside the point. It may not feel easy or simple, but there is always a choice. EACH “slippery slope” you mention above all have CHOICE involved. You can have a conversation, and CHOOSE to let that be all it is. You can feel all the feels you want, and choose to have a conversation with your SO or choose to let things be.

I would argue even those in a relationship that is so restrictive that THOUGHTS about another person are considered “cheating” , are still CHOOSING to continue a relationship.

While I can empathize with people in such positions: I still maintain that there is a choice.

When people in fraught relationships talk about opening up to polyamory, it makes me think of couples who think having a baby will fix their relationship. Except instead of having a tiny human being that you have to take care of 24 hours a day, the new person/people are adults that have their own thoughts and feelings about things, and there’s sex and complicated feelings about that.

I sort of agree and also disagree. Monogamy isn’t what’s restrictive, but rather it’s the boundaries that two people have negotiated between them about their relationship to one another. So monogamy is not restrictive if that’s the choice two people have negotiated between themselves . That’s their established boundaries. It however can be restrictive if a couple has gone into a relationship thinking that monogamous type boundaries are the only ones they can have.

Are you confused about what that word, 'restrictive', means ...? "It's not restrictive if they explicitly and voluntarily choose to restrict themselves" comes off like you think the word means something it doesn't

Wow! Sort of a judgmental response there. Didn't expect that. But yes, I'm pretty darned sure I get the definition of "restrictive", but just to be safe, let me refresh my memory: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/restrictive.

Looking at the definition of "restrictive", I stand by my statements. Even if my partner and I have agreed to the type of completely open relationship where she can do whatever she wants and vice versa, we've still placed a restriction on that relationship. That restriction is we've agreed we should not have a say in our partner's relationship conduct with others. While some relationships may have fewer restrictions than others, they always exist.

You are being disingenuous with the application of restriction. You restrict things from a specific scope, in a specific way. Monogamy will restrict sexual and romantic partners as a baseline attribute. Polyamory generally does/does not, but the title of polyamory does not restrict sexual or romantic partners as a baseline attribute.

But my whole point was what if two people negotiated that monogamous boundary because that's what they wanted for themselves (as opposed to having the notion forced on them by societal norms). In that instance, I wouldn't consider that their monogamy is restricting for them. It's exactly what they wanted.

I guess it's how you interpret "restrictive". If you mean it in a high level sense that monogamy restricts your choices of sexual partner, then yes I see the point. But I was interpreting it as restrictive to the relationship choices of the individual people in said relationship, and if they have both agreed to a monogamous relationship, are they really restricting each other's behavior? I'm just saying that in that situation, I would not consider consensual monogamy restrictive to their sexual choices in that they've opted into having only one choice of sexual partner. I just don't think that something you've chosen for yourself can be considered a restriction.

Boundaries are one of the most important parts of being poly, because it requires so much honesty and communication. People most often assume being poly is just being allowed to have sex with everyone, and that there isn't any other elements to it, because society has told us for so long that people only "stray" for sex.

Everyone has these assumptions for both polyamory & monogamy and, this breaks it down. Just because you're poly doesn't change the fact that it's still a type of relationship style, and there still needs to be boundaries, respect, and honesty. Every kind of relationship should have those.

My first experience with poly was very emotional. My boundaries were never respected and I lived out everybodies biggest fear when transitioning an existing relationship. I was the only one reading, talking and trying to respect everyone's feelings.

Months down the road, I found out that the level of intimacy was much much more than we had already talked about. Communication is huge for me, and she was hiding things along the way. She broke up with me while lying in bed. Said she wasn't poly. She said she didn't feel the same for me anymore.

She seemed to think I wasn't poly either, just using it as an excuse to find someone new. It didn't help that I'm now married to the woman I started talking to right after. We've been monogamish through having our son and establishing our family. Weve recently started opening up and acquiring new friends and family. The funny thing is, I know she "checks in" on my profile from time to time. There isn't a speck of our poly identity on our profiles and I know that reinforces her beliefs about me.

I had a partner that cheated on me when we were mono. We broke up, got back together a year later and poly...and she made several rules and then broke them all consistently. Some people just can't do what they say they will.